Since June 2012, thanks to Chief Justice John Roberts and his Supreme Court majority, the penalties the law will impose on individuals and families who do not purchase health insurance beginning next year are legally considered "taxes." In the same convoluted sense that what most of us have been calling "premium subsidies" in Obamacare should really be considered "tax credits," the premiums themselves should be considered "taxes."

Hannigan's email proudly points readers to a "cool calculator from the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation that shows how the tax credits work," and encourages everyone to "share it on Facebook or Twitter."

Obamacare opponents should take Hannigan up on her suggestion: embed the calculator on your sites, and encourage everyone who opposes the law's implementation and supports its defunding to take it for a test drive. Then, demand that the law's defenders in Washington -- as well as those who claim to oppose it but can't find the courage to support its defunding -- explain how they can permit the perverse results the calculator demonstrates to take effect.

You see, Kaiser's "cool calculator" makes the exact points Robert Rector at the Heritage Foundation and yours truly have been arguing since early 2010 -- namely, that the Affordable Care Act will deeply discourage work and virtually any other attempt at financial improvement. It will also throw new obstacles in the way of couples wishing to get and stay married, even to the point of encouraging marital breakups of families with children.

Millions of Americans who do not have employer-provided or other group health insurance arrangements and who don't purchase private non-Obamacare individual or family coverage before the end of 2013 -- something most people don't realize remains an alternative for just a few more months -- will be legally required to enroll in the Affordable Care Act's health insurance exchanges or to face the penalties now characterized as "taxes." The number of Americans forced to resort to the exchanges has (per my opinion) been artificially and deliberately juiced by the Obama administration's illegal decision to delay the imposition of the "employer mandate" until 2015. Many individuals and families who would have qualified for employer-provided coverage if the employer mandate had been enforced in January 2014 will now have to go to the exchanges or face the penalties.

Those who enroll in Obamacare's exchanges will be subjected to a brand new system of income-based federal taxation (again, their word) over and above Uncle Sam's existing income and FICA (Social Security and Medicare) tax regimes. This will include marginal rates for most enrollees ranging from 9.5 percent to 18 percent, along with myriad "cliffs" where premiums -- er, taxes -- skyrocket when a person or couple earns just one dollar of additional income.

The table tells us that in states which have chosen not to expand Medicaid, enrollment in that program will be mandatory for single people with annual incomes under $11,490, that group's poverty line (some states have chosen to expand Medicaid access to everyone under 138% of the poverty level).

Income right at the poverty line triggers exchange enrollment and an immediate $230 premium. The premiums increase by $1 for each $50 of additional annual earnings up to $15,281. At the next dollar, the premium jumps from $306 (2 percent of $15,281) to $458 — a $152 tax on $1 of earnings. (Believe me, we're just warming up with examples of "cliff" taxation.)

The next level is also intriguing, given that Obamacare is supposedly a masterpiece of "progressive" thought. The average marginal rate on earnings between $15,282 and $34,369 is 14.7%. As the footnote above explains (fully illustrated here), "marginal rates vary between 11% and 18% (rounded), and gradually increase as income increases." But from $34,370 to $45,960 in income, as seen above, the marginal rate drops to 9.5 percent.

Thus, the "tax credits" OFA's Hannigan thinks are "cool" are regressive, taking a higher percentage of additional earnings from lower-income working class people and a lower percentage from those with mid-range earnings.

Then look at what happens once a single person who is 50 or older hits annual earnings of $45,961. At that point, what remains of those wonderful "tax credits" goes up in smoke. (Speaking of smoke, you won't believe how steep Obamacare's tobacco surcharges are. But I digress.) For a 50 year-old single person, dollar number 45,961 causes their annual exchange premium (i.e., "tax") to increase from $4,366 to $5,390. That's because what Kaiser calls Obamacare's "government tax credit subsidy" (they're also having a hard time with the language) goes from $1,024 to zero. For a 64 year old, a "tax credit subsidy" of $4,688 gets zeroed out. The marginal tax rate on dollar number 45,961 for that person is a whopping 468,800%.